Last year, I blogged about the first English Proficiency Index here. Education First has now released their second index, and they're getting some good publicity out of it (I'm linking to them). The same problems as last year occur: self selection of participants, and need for a computer with internet access to do the test. There's also no data on test reliability and no validity arguments. Still, with 1.7 million participants over three years in more than 50 countries, you wouldn't want to completely dismiss the results either.
One of the interesting things was the levels of adult English learners in English-speaking countries, which can be found on p. 34. Canada and Australia have "high proficiency" learners, while the UK's are "mid proficiency" and the US's "low proficiency". There is some attempt to explain this in terms of language teaching infrastructure and other variables. Also check out the regional info-graphics.
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ReplyDeleteThe index is here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ef.com/epi/downloads/